Unravelling a Hindu Woman’s Desire for a Muslim Man: Exploring Identity in Inter-faith Intimacy

Abstract

Erikson and Kakar’s work on identity development has illuminated the interconnectedness of individuals and communities. This study examines the relationship between prohibited desire and identity in inter-faith intimacy, using Erikson’s negative identity paradigm. Society often rejects mixed identities resulting from inter-faith relationships. The paper examines Kakar’s impact on group identification and considers Erikson’s concept of negative identity. Through Karuna, a young Hindu introduced to Islam by her family, her intimate relationships with a young Muslim man are explored. India is huge and diverse, and Hindus and Muslims have lived together for generations. Unfortunately, Hindu-Muslim unions are illegal now. The politicisation of Hindu-Muslim love as Love-Jihad perpetuates the myth that Muslim men actively pursue Hindu women. This paper looks at a Hindu-Muslim relationship through the eyes of Karuna, who was introduced to Islam by her family. As Karuna grew older, her love for radical Islam resulted in her choosing Muslim men as her love objects and eventually being disowned by her family. Using Erikson's conceptualisation of the negative identity, which focuses on what happens when you identify with everything that is forbidden by your community, we focus on understanding Karuna’s desirous self.

Keywords

desire group identity Hindu-Muslim intimate relationships Love Jihad mixed identity negative identity

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Akhtar

(Ed.), (2005). Freud along the Ganges: Psychoanalytic reflections on the people and culture of India. Other Press.

Altman

(1995). The analyst in the inner city: Race, class, and culture through a psychoanalytic lens. Analytic Press.

Bhalla

(2006). Partition dialogues: Memories of a lost home. Oxford University Press.

Blos

(1974). The genealogy of the ego ideal. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 29(1), 43–88. https://doi.org/10.1080/00797308.1974.11822614

Das

(2020). Textures of the ordinary: Anthropological phrases upon communities of sorrow. Fordham University Press.

Dimen

(1994). Money, love, and greed: Notes on a self-devaluation. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 4(1), 69–100. https://doi.org/10.1080/10481889409539007

Erikson

E. H.

(1950). Childhood and society. W. W. Norton & Company.

Erikson

E. H.

(1963). Childhood and society: 2d ed. rev. and enlarged. Norton.

Erikson

E. H.

(1968). Identity: Youth and crisis. W. W. Norton & Company.

10.

Erikson

E. H.

(1975). Life history and the historical moment. W. W. Norton & Company.

11.

Freud

(1912). The dynamics of transference. In Strachey

(Ed. & Trans.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 12, pp. 97–108). Hogarth Press.

12.

Fromm

(1941). Escape from freedom. Farrar & Rinehart.

13.

Fromm

(1962). Beyond the chains of illusion: My encounter with Marx and Freud. Simon & Schuster.

14.

Gerson

(2009). When the third is dead: Memory, mourning, and witnessing in the aftermath of the Holocaust. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 1343(6), 1341–1357. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-8315.2009.00214.x

15.

Goode

W. J.

(1959). The theoretical importance of love. American Sociological Review, 24(1), 38–47. https://doi.org/10.2307/2089581

16.

Green

(2005). The work of the negative. Free Association Books. (A. Weller, Trans.).

17.

Green

Kohon

(2005). Love and its vicissitudes. Routledge.

18.

Green

Kohon

(2015). Love and its vicissitudes. Routledge.

19.

Gupta

(2009). Hindu women, Muslim men: Love jihad and conversions. Economic and Political Weekly, 44(51), 13–15. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25663907

20.

Gutwill

(2006). The interpersonal and the economic. In Layton

Hollander

N. C.

Gutwill

(Eds.), Psychoanalysis, class and politics: Sentience and structures (pp. 143–154). Routledge.

21.

Hollander

N. C.

(2006). Psychoanalysis and the privatization of social anxiety. International Journal of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology, 1(2), 183–198.

22.

Holmes

(2019). A practical psychoanalytic guide to reflexive research: The reverie research method. Routledge, Taylor & Francis group.

23.

Homayounpour

Kiarostami

(2012). Doing psychoanalysis in Tehran. MIT Press.

24.

Horney

(1937). The neurotic personality of our time. W. W. Norton & Company.

25.

Kakar

(1989). Intimate relations: Sexuality in India. University of Chicago Press.

26.

Kakar

(2003). The colors of violence: Cultural identities, religion, and conflict. Braille Jymico.

27.

Kakar

(2007). The Indians: Portrait of a people. Penguin Books India.

28.

Kakar

(2010). The crimson throne. Viking.

29.

Krishnan

(2019). Fearless FreedomREEDOM. PENGUIN.

30.

Kundera

(1987). The unbearable lightness of being. (M. H. Heim, Trans.). Harper & Row. (Original work published 1984).

31.

Lacan

(2015). The seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book X: Anxiety. (A. R. Price, Ed.; J. Miller, Trans.). Polity. (Original work published 2004).

32.

Layton

(2004). Who’s that girl? Who’s that boy? Clinical practice meets postmodern gender theory (2nd ed.). Analytic Press.

33.

Layton

(2006). Racial intensities in the relative world: Commentary on paper by Neil Altman. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 16(2), 193–204.

34.

Lévi-Strauss

(1968). Structural anthropology. Basic Books. (C. Jacobson & B. G. Schoepf, Trans.). (Original work published 1958).

35.

Ogden

(2019). Projective identification and psychotherapeutic technique. Routledge.

36.

Ogden

T. H.

(1977). The projective identification and psychotherapeutic technique. Jason Aronson.

37.

Ogden

T. H.

(2009). Rediscovering psychoanalysis: Thinking and dreaming, learning and forgetting. Routledge.

38.

Peltz

(2006). The manic society. In Layton

Hollander

N. C.

Gutwill

(Eds.), Psychoanalysis, class and politics: Encounters in the clinical setting (pp. 65–80). Routledge.

39.

Peltz

(2020). Going to where the world ends: When the bodies of children speak who is listening? Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 30(2), 166–179. https://doi.org/10.1080/10481885.2020.1722571

40.

Phillips

(2007). Side effects. Harper Perennial.

41.

Samuels

(2006). Politics on the couch: Citizenship and the internal life. Profile Books.

42.

Sullivan

H. S.

(1965). Personal psychopathology: Early formulations. W. W. Norton & Company.

43.

Thompson

C. M.

(1964). Interpersonal psychoanalysis: The selected papers of Clara M. Thompson. (M. R. Green, Ed.). Basic Books.

44.

Truschke

(2016). Culture of encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court. Columbia University Press.

45.

Volkan

V. D.

(1997). Blood lines: From ethnic pride to ethnic terrorism. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

46.

Winnicott . (1963). The mentally ill in your case load in Winnicott

D. W.

(1984). In Khan

(Ed)., The maturational processes and the facilitating environment; studies in the theory of emotional development (p. 221). International Universities Press.

47.

Winnicott

D. W.

(1984). The maturational processes and the facilitating environment; studies in the theory of emotional development. International Universities Press.